The Tough Alchemy of Ben Okri

Zusatztext Gray’s illumination of [Okri's] writings and her own profound insight into tolerance deserve a first place on the bookshelf of any modern humanities course. Informationen zum Autor Rosemary Alice Gray is ‘Emeritus Professor’ in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is a rated researcher, specializing in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and Pan-African texts; her current research interest is the work of Ben Okri. She has written or presented thirty-one papers on Okri’s oeuvre in the past decade. She is Honorary Life Vice President of the English Academy of Southern Africa and Managing Editor of the English Academy Review: Journal of English Studies . Her book publications include Broken Strings: The Politics of Poetry ; Sounding Wings: Short Stories from Africa (with Stephen Finn, Longmans); Light Comes out of the Darkness: The History of Expo for Young Scientists (OUP); and A Glass Half Full or Half Empty? The challenges of political succession and elections in Africa (Ssali). Zusammenfassung Winner of the Booker Prize for The Famished Road ! Ben Okri is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary writers writing today. Featuring a substantial new interview with Ben Okri himself! a full bibliography of his creative work and covering his complete works! this is the first in-depth study of Okri's themes and artistic vision. Rosemary Gray explores Okri's career-long engagement with myth! Nigerian politics and culture! and with the environmental crisis in the age of the Anthropocene. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface Foreword Acknowledgements PART I: The Alchemy of Life: ‘To find life in myth and myth in life’ ( Birds of Heaven 1996) 1.1 Ben Okri’s aphorisms: ‘Music on the wings of a soaring bird’1.2 Epistemic ecology and the ‘diminishing boundaries of a shrinking world’ in ‘Heraclitus’ Golden River’ from Wild 1.3 Ontopoiesis in Okri’s poetic oeuvre and A Time for New Dreams 1.4 Recovering our true state of being in ‘The Comic Destiny’ PART II: Rebalancing the triadic elements of life 2.1 Apologia pro In Arcadia : A neglected masterpiece?2.2 ‘Domesticating infinity’ in Mental Fight and Astonishing the Gods 2.3 Redreaming ways of seeing: Intuitive creativity in The Landscapes Within 2.4 Promoting the poetic cause in ‘stokus’ from Tales of Freedom PART III: The mercurial imaginary: The writer as demiurge (artist/ craftsman) 3.1 Sowing ‘a quilt of harmony’: Eco-phenomenology in ‘Lines in Potentis ’ 3.2 ‘A clear lucid stream of everywhereness’ in Wild : A postmodern perspective3.3 Survivalist Culture in ‘Laughter Beneath the Bridge’3.4 The Poetic Muse of Archaeology PART IV: The wheel of transformation: The writer as lodestar (guide) 4.1 Sublime transformative paremiology in A Way of Being Free 4.2 ‘The Standeruppers’: The frightening irony of the Anthropocene4.3 Conscious Reveries in The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age 4.4 ‘The Incandescence of the Wind’: ‘Rain wisdom down upon this earth’ PART V: In search of the marvellous: The sacred ziggurat (symbolic celestial mountain) 5.1 Protean Magic in The Mystery Feast and The Magic Lamp 5.2 An Interval in the Enchantment of Living: The Age of Magic 5.3 When chaos is the god of an era: Rediscovering an ‘axis mundi’ in Starbook 5.4 In conversation with Ben Okri BibliographyIndex...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Foreword

Acknowledgements
PART I: The Alchemy of Life: 'To find life in myth and myth in life' (Birds of Heaven 1996)
1.1 Ben Okri's aphorisms: 'Music on the wings of a soaring bird'
1.2 Epistemic ecology and the 'diminishing boundaries of a shrinking world' in 'Heraclitus' Golden River' from Wild
1.3 Ontopoiesis in Okri's poetic oeuvre and A Time for New Dreams
1.4 Recovering our true state of being in 'The Comic Destiny'
PART II: Rebalancing the triadic elements of life
2.1 Apologia pro In Arcadia: A neglected masterpiece?
2.2 'Domesticating infinity' in Mental Fight and Astonishing the Gods
2.3 Redreaming ways of seeing: Intuitive creativity in The Landscapes Within
2.4 Promoting the poetic cause in 'stokus' from Tales of Freedom
PART III: The mercurial imaginary: The writer as demiurge (artist/ craftsman)
3.1 Sowing 'a quilt of harmony': Eco-phenomenology in 'Lines in Potentis'
3.2 'A clear lucid stream of everywhereness' in Wild: A postmodern perspective
3.3 Survivalist Culture in 'Laughter Beneath the Bridge'
3.4 The Poetic Muse of Archaeology
PART IV: The wheel of transformation: The writer as lodestar (guide)
4.1 Sublime transformative paremiology in A Way of Being Free
4.2 'The Standeruppers': The frightening irony of the Anthropocene
4.3 Conscious Reveries in The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age
4.4 'The Incandescence of the Wind': 'Rain wisdom down upon this earth'
PART V: In search of the marvellous: The sacred ziggurat (symbolic celestial mountain)
5.1 Protean Magic in The Mystery Feast and The Magic Lamp
5.2 An Interval in the Enchantment of Living: The Age of Magic
5.3 When chaos is the god of an era: Rediscovering an 'axis mundi' in Starbook
5.4 In conversation with Ben Okri

Bibliography
Index

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Rosemary Alice Gray is 'Emeritus Professor' in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is a rated researcher, specializing in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and Pan-African texts; her current research interest is the work of Ben Okri. She has written or presented thirty-one papers on Okri's oeuvre in the past decade. She is Honorary Life Vice President of the English Academy of Southern Africa and Managing Editor of the English Academy Review: Journal of English Studies. Her book publications include Broken Strings: The Politics of Poetry; Sounding Wings: Short Stories from Africa(with Stephen Finn, Longmans); Light Comes out of the Darkness: The History of Expo for Young Scientists(OUP); and A Glass Half Full or Half Empty? The challenges of political succession and elections in Africa(Ssali).

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Rosemary Alice Gray
• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erschienen: 31.08.2020
• EAN: 9781350152991
• ISBN: 978-1-350-15299-1
• Seiten: 304
• Themen: Belletristik > Lyrik, Dramatik; Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik > Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft > Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft; LITERARY CRITICISM / African, LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: postcolonial literature